The team, which has successfully brought more than 400 prosecutions against parking cheats who pretend to be disabled, won the coveted overall winners' trophy at the 2007 British Parking Awards.

The team was honoured for its work in detecting and preventing blue badge fraud. Its investigators target not only the thieves and fraudsters who use stolen or forged badges, but also the families and friends of badge holders who dishonestly use them for their own purposes.

The badges allow holders to park for as long as they like free of charge in pay and display bays and also in resident and business permit spaces. Holders can also park for up to three hours on yellow lines as long as there are no other restrictions in force. They are designed to help disabled drivers park as close as possible to their destinations.

Because they are so valuable a thriving trade exists in stolen badges, which are usually obtained by breaking into disabled peoples' cars. There is also growing use of forged badges.  It is the illicit use of these stolen and counterfeit badges by able-bodied drivers that the permit fraud team concentrates on.

Among the people they have prosecuted for dishonestly using these badges include civil servants, bank employees, a solicitor, an estate agent, pub landlords and an elderly care home owner.

Since September 2004, a total of 170 individuals have been successfully prosecuted for blue badge fraud, with fines and court costs amounting to more than £120,000.

More than 190 cars have been seized for various offences relating to abuse of the scheme, with each owner having to pay up to £200 to retrieve them.

As well as winning the overall title – where it was pitted against nine of the country's best-run and award winning parking services – the team also picked up the trophy for Best Effective On street Parking Management. In total the whole competition attracted 90 entries.

Executive member for planning and transportation Cllr Guy Senior said: "This is a richly deserved accolade. Our permit fraud team is widely recognised as the best in the country when it comes to combating this type of crime.People who abuse the system like this need to be brought to book and that is precisely what our fraud team has been doing so successfully. People who break the law in this way deprive genuinely disabled people from parking spaces and they bring the whole blue badge scheme into disrepute.

"The fraudsters who manipulate and abuse the system should expect no mercy from the council or the courts."